Grow lights made by monkeys on crack

I don’t know what I’ve done to make the ohms and amps so angry at me. But when the general curse that frazzles anything that plugs in at my house — that is, anything that doesn’t have to do with cooking or writing, thank God on bended knee that my computer and electric teakettle work fine, or truly the men in white coats would have to take me away — I say, when this general electronics curse decides to extend its domain to MY SEED STARTING APPARATUS — the time has come for an existential HOWL of PROTEST.

My pathetic little seedlings have been trying their best, really they have, despite the fact that my costly light rig from the home & ranch store has refused to fire up the second of its two grow-light tubes ever since I brought it in from the garage. Refused, despite my spending $12 on another tube. So it must be the fixture, curse it with a thousand curses from every gardening ancestor I can summon, may rust infect its every weld and join. Not the light tubes themselves.

OK. So I scurry my bee-hind to the Big Box Store of Home Accoutrements and purchase a shop light. $10 on sale. I do not assume said shop light WILL actually light, seeing as how this is my life and such presumption on my part would be certain to anger the malevolent spirits. Nor do I assume the light will not be a quarter-inch too long to be suspended from the light-suspension rack, also purchased last year at a price I quail to mention.

No, no, I do not assume. I test. I take the light fixture from its carton and I test its length. Hurrah. 48 inches on the label translates to 48 inches EVEN WHEN YOU TAKE THE LIGHT OUT OUT OF THE BOX. Amazing. I move back out to the living room to perform more tests. I plug the light in. I bring one tube. And I slowly, carefully — you who have put long, fluorescent light bulbs into shop-light fixtures, you know this dance — I gently maneuver the pairs of pins on each of the tube ends into the little sockets and try to roll the tube into the proper position for these pins. I plug the light in. THE TUBE LIGHTS UP! THE BAND PLAYS! THE CROWD GOES WILD!

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OK, no crowd, just the dog, who doesn’t exactly go wild because she’s hiding in the bedroom, having seen this movie before. Traitor.

And we have no lights. Both tubes lie, dead opaque white in the light fixture, like big fat beached useless walrus tusks. And nothing that I do, no way that I gently, CALMLY roll or adjust or de-socket or re-insert the tubes, seems to make a bit of difference. Except that one tube, where the silver metal of its end cap is attached — a friend calls this end-cap thingamajig a “baffle,” which is just about the most appropriate name it could possibly have — one end cap leaks a tablespoon of a brown, crumbly

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substance into the light fixture. NOW WHAT THE HECK IS THAT STUFF?

All right, all you gardeners with your mechanically gifted spouses who can induce anything that plugs in to stand up and recite Shakespeare and who carve you garden gargoyles with their chain saws, all of you ubercompetent women with your pink or purple-handled tool sets who can fix a potty and miter a corner and sump a pump and build French drains: I’m pausing to hate you now, just for the briefest moment, here in the midnight hour when I’m trying to do right by my baby seedlings and yours are all tucked in for the night in their custom greenhouses with their little timers clicking off their perfectly functioning light systems and singing them a lullabye in Old French. Oh, garden hardware envy is a mean, righteous beast and I’m giving myself over to him completely. THERE. Phew.

OK. I’m done hating you, but these light fixtures? They are still On. My. List.

And I’m doing what my blogging she-ro, the Yarn Harlot, does when her knitting threatens her sanity. I’m having a strong drink and a little lie-down.

Ballast, not baffle. The little giddy at the end is the ballast, it stores up a jolt of charge to get the thing started.

That’s insulation most likely.

I am betting it was put together poorly. Can you take it back?

S.B.R. Loveland

I am so sorry to hear your story.

Ballast, not baffle. The little giddy at the end is the ballast, it stores up a jolt of charge to get the thing started.

That’s insulation most likely.

I am betting it was put together poorly. Can you take it back?

Deb

Mondo entertaining, at your expense I’m afraid…I was however left in suspense, did you ever get ’em to work? While I am one of those harlots who had my man help with the grow light system, I do feel you pain, as I am addicted to sprouting my own seeds.

Deb

Mondo entertaining, at your expense I’m afraid…I was however left in suspense, did you ever get ’em to work? While I am one of those harlots who had my man help with the grow light system, I do feel you pain, as I am addicted to sprouting my own seeds.